• Post Reply Bookmark Topic Watch Topic
  • New Topic
programming forums Java Mobile Certification Databases Caching Books Engineering Micro Controllers OS Languages Paradigms IDEs Build Tools Frameworks Application Servers Open Source This Site Careers Other Pie Elite all forums
this forum made possible by our volunteer staff, including ...
Marshals:
  • Campbell Ritchie
  • Jeanne Boyarsky
  • Ron McLeod
  • Paul Clapham
  • Liutauras Vilda
Sheriffs:
  • paul wheaton
  • Rob Spoor
  • Devaka Cooray
Saloon Keepers:
  • Stephan van Hulst
  • Tim Holloway
  • Carey Brown
  • Frits Walraven
  • Tim Moores
Bartenders:
  • Mikalai Zaikin

Did agile development make you faster or better or both?

 
Ranch Hand
Posts: 76
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
I'd be interested in the experiences you made with agile development as compared to conventional development in real world projects.

Did agile development save you time?
Did agile development have an positive impact on software quality?
Did agile development make your programmers happier (or did they burn out)?

Please share your experiences.

Lars
 
author
Posts: 14112
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
I'm convinced that adopting Agile practices has in fact saved our product, if not our company.

Before we started with practices like testing, refactoring, pair programming etc., our product shared the fate of so many products - it became harder and harder, more and more costly to add new features. Even the simplest extensions where hard to impossible to implement, because of all the unexpected side effects, subtle bugs etc.

By applying Agile practices, we were able to change that - after some time, new features became less and less costly and risky. Our management is quite happy with this change, although I fear they don't quite understand what was necessary to do it...
 
author & internet detective
Posts: 41860
908
Eclipse IDE VI Editor Java
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator

Originally posted by Lars Behnke:
Did agile development save you time?


Absolutely! On a developer level, it saves time because I am able to maintain a faster velocity. I get into a tight loop with testing/coding and am able to commit often. It also gets me to think about code in smaller chunks. And just like with mergesort, it is faster to solve smaller problems. On a project level, it saves time because we find problems faster - both on the design and integration levels.


Did agile development have an positive impact on software quality?


Yes! We've found plenty of regression errors this way. We also set up tests to find common problems before they make it into the codebase. (Such as accessibility errors.)


Did agile development make your programmers happier (or did they burn out)?


Note there are more than two choices here. Someone can be unhappy without burning out. That said, it certainly makes me happier. Our team has only had one employee leave in the last five years, so I don't think it causes burnout.
 
Sheriff
Posts: 14691
16
Eclipse IDE VI Editor Ubuntu
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator

Even the simplest extensions where hard to impossible to implement, because of all the unexpected side effects, subtle bugs etc.


I'm not convinced that Agile would prevent that. Isn't there more fundamental problems behind that ? Or do you simply mean that with a good unit testing package, those unexpected side effects will be detected ?
 
Ilja Preuss
author
Posts: 14112
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator

Originally posted by Christophe Verre:

I'm not convinced that Agile would prevent that. Isn't there more fundamental problems behind that ? Or do you simply mean that with a good unit testing package, those unexpected side effects will be detected ?



Writing unit tests will in fact also reduce those side effects directly. Let me explain:

To effectively write unit tests, you need to have units that are testable. (Doh!) Testable units are units that are well decoupled from other units, and that are therefore easy to get into a test harness in isolation. So refactoring code so that it is testable leads to a better decoupled design.

Unexpected side effects mostly come from inappropriate coupling. By forcing you to better decouple your design, writing tests directly reduces the amount of unexpected side effects.

Frankly, for us it probably weren't unit tests that had the biggest effect, but rigorous refactoring. And yes, we refactored a lot without having tests in place. It's a risky undertaking, and I wouldn't really recommend it, but for is it actually worked out in the way that we at least removed many more bugs than we newly introduced.
 
I am a man of mystery. Mostly because of this tiny ad:
a bit of art, as a gift, the permaculture playing cards
https://gardener-gift.com
reply
    Bookmark Topic Watch Topic
  • New Topic